I very much believe in the Dead Internet theory but for other reasons. We are fast approaching the point where genuine interaction will be stifled on the internet and a few individuals will...
I very much believe in the Dead Internet theory but for other reasons. We are fast approaching the point where genuine interaction will be stifled on the internet and a few individuals will control the narrative. But I think we've been headed in that direction long before ChatGPT.
Don't get me wrong, machine learning is a major concern and the technology has come so far that the average person won't be able to distinguish reality from deepfakes. It means that next year's election is going to be won on the most viral deepfakes, whether pumped out as dank memes like the recent Trump/Biden/Obama tier lists have or to push genuine disinformation. But ChatGPT is just a symptom of our diseased society.
Social media is the prime culprit.
I'm not talking about early sites like MySpace, Bebo, Faceparty or others that genuinely existed as tools to help people connect. Their founders were chill. I'm talking the modern era of social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Discord, etc which have gobbled up independent discussion boards.
Social media is very good at creating toxic partisan echo chambers, which we can clearly see in many places. Reddit for example is moderated by a small cabal of (admin-backed) power users that run hundreds of major subreddits and control what goes on the site. Even the more controversial subreddits like The_Donald which this cabal campaigned for years to shut down were partisan echo chambers in their own right and disagreeing with the hive mind would see you swiftly purged.
Tumblr and Twitter are notorious for internet activism and having a controversial opinion is likely to lead to you being doxxed and/or swatted. I'll just leave it at that. There is a reason I don't delve into controversies like Gamergate, because I've seen people on both sides of the coin get SWAT teams called on their addresses.
Another reason I blame social media? Spam, or rather the complete lack of shits given by big tech towards tackling it.
It is shockingly easy to astroturf a social media platform. Not quite as easy as buying a hundred followers or votes, because something this blatant will quickly see your account banned from triggering anti-spam measures. But there is probably AI that can make this artificial growth look as organic as possible. It is also an open secret that you can pay certain prominent users to promote your content on social news aggregators. Digg had this issue and so does Reddit. The difference is that Digg power users didn't have moderation powers.
Go to any YouTube comments section and witness how much spam there is. A lot of content creators have criticized YouTube for it but Google doesn't care because they're too big to fail and are one of the most powerful tech companies in the world. My Facebook Messenger inbox is full of spam and about 99% of friend requests I receive are from fake phishing scam accounts with profile pics stolen from a model's Instagram or Weibo profile.
Online dating has the same issue. Companies like Match, Tinder, Bumble etc have zero interest in helping you find a partner. They just want to make your experience miserable to the point where you'll fork out the monthly cost of several World of Warcraft subscriptions for a premium account. If everybody was able to find love, you wouldn't see people paying $30+ a month just for unlimited swipes or the ability to see who has liked their profile.
And you wonder why incels are a thing...
The only matches I get on dating apps these days are either phishing scammers who have tried to trick me into entering my credit card details on an illicit cam site or get me to invest in crypto, or foreign ladies on the other side of the world who spoof their location to seek a long distance boyfriend. I have no preference on ethnicity when it comes to a romantic partner, but I don't want a LDR or to be used as the means to a visa. Plus the UK government has made it a huge headache to bring a foreign spouse into the UK - as I found out from former colleagues who spent months being grilled and interrogated by the Home Office before they'd allow their partners to come to the UK.
I also found out (after having a bad experience on OkCupid and having customer support gift me a free month of Premium) that none of my matches were in Europe. They were almost all from other continents and would randomly change their location to meet new people, which is very much against the app's rules.
As for running a platform outside of mainstream social media... good luck with that. I tried to run a photography blog with secondary presences on Instagram and Pinterest three years ago, and the only traffic I got were from spambots that were astroturfing the absolute fuck out of my comments sections - no matter how much guidance I followed from SEO rulebooks.
I very much believe in the Dead Internet theory but for other reasons. We are fast approaching the point where genuine interaction will be stifled on the internet and a few individuals will control the narrative. But I think we've been headed in that direction long before ChatGPT.
Don't get me wrong, machine learning is a major concern and the technology has come so far that the average person won't be able to distinguish reality from deepfakes. It means that next year's election is going to be won on the most viral deepfakes, whether pumped out as dank memes like the recent Trump/Biden/Obama tier lists have or to push genuine disinformation. But ChatGPT is just a symptom of our diseased society.
Social media is the prime culprit.
I'm not talking about early sites like MySpace, Bebo, Faceparty or others that genuinely existed as tools to help people connect. Their founders were chill. I'm talking the modern era of social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Discord, etc which have gobbled up independent discussion boards.
Social media is very good at creating toxic partisan echo chambers, which we can clearly see in many places. Reddit for example is moderated by a small cabal of (admin-backed) power users that run hundreds of major subreddits and control what goes on the site. Even the more controversial subreddits like The_Donald which this cabal campaigned for years to shut down were partisan echo chambers in their own right and disagreeing with the hive mind would see you swiftly purged.
Tumblr and Twitter are notorious for internet activism and having a controversial opinion is likely to lead to you being doxxed and/or swatted. I'll just leave it at that. There is a reason I don't delve into controversies like Gamergate, because I've seen people on both sides of the coin get SWAT teams called on their addresses.
Another reason I blame social media? Spam, or rather the complete lack of shits given by big tech towards tackling it.
It is shockingly easy to astroturf a social media platform. Not quite as easy as buying a hundred followers or votes, because something this blatant will quickly see your account banned from triggering anti-spam measures. But there is probably AI that can make this artificial growth look as organic as possible. It is also an open secret that you can pay certain prominent users to promote your content on social news aggregators. Digg had this issue and so does Reddit. The difference is that Digg power users didn't have moderation powers.
Go to any YouTube comments section and witness how much spam there is. A lot of content creators have criticized YouTube for it but Google doesn't care because they're too big to fail and are one of the most powerful tech companies in the world. My Facebook Messenger inbox is full of spam and about 99% of friend requests I receive are from fake phishing scam accounts with profile pics stolen from a model's Instagram or Weibo profile.
Online dating has the same issue. Companies like Match, Tinder, Bumble etc have zero interest in helping you find a partner. They just want to make your experience miserable to the point where you'll fork out the monthly cost of several World of Warcraft subscriptions for a premium account. If everybody was able to find love, you wouldn't see people paying $30+ a month just for unlimited swipes or the ability to see who has liked their profile.
And you wonder why incels are a thing...
The only matches I get on dating apps these days are either phishing scammers who have tried to trick me into entering my credit card details on an illicit cam site or get me to invest in crypto, or foreign ladies on the other side of the world who spoof their location to seek a long distance boyfriend. I have no preference on ethnicity when it comes to a romantic partner, but I don't want a LDR or to be used as the means to a visa. Plus the UK government has made it a huge headache to bring a foreign spouse into the UK - as I found out from former colleagues who spent months being grilled and interrogated by the Home Office before they'd allow their partners to come to the UK.
I also found out (after having a bad experience on OkCupid and having customer support gift me a free month of Premium) that none of my matches were in Europe. They were almost all from other continents and would randomly change their location to meet new people, which is very much against the app's rules.
As for running a platform outside of mainstream social media... good luck with that. I tried to run a photography blog with secondary presences on Instagram and Pinterest three years ago, and the only traffic I got were from spambots that were astroturfing the absolute fuck out of my comments sections - no matter how much guidance I followed from SEO rulebooks.